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TVOT - Ron-Rick

Keynote: How NBCUniversal Is Embracing the New Media Landscape

Video of TVOT NYC 10 - Made by W12 Studios - &quot;TV at the Speed of Light&quot;

TVOT NYC 2016 - Movie

TV at the Speed of Light

TVOT - Designing2

TVOT NYC 2016 Keynote Fireside on the Future of TV Advertising

[itvt] is pleased to announce that we have updated the TVOT NYC 2016Schedule of Sessions with more details about the keynote fireside conversation between Laura Molen, EVP of the Lifestyle and Hispanic Advertising Sales Group at NBCUniversal, and Tim Hanlon, CEO of The Vertere Group. We will be announcing details of additional TVOT NYC 2016 sessions this week and next

[itvt] is pleased to announce that we have updated the TVOT NYC 2016 Schedule of Sessions with more details about the keynote fireside conversation between Scott Ferber, CEO of Videology, Maria Mandel Dunsche, Head of Marketing at AT&T AdWorks, and Howard Homonoff, Media and Entertainment Columnist at Forbes.com. We have also included this information below.

Lisa Crawford Column Intro

Presenting a New [itvt] Column: "Run of Show"

Column Will Focus on the Role of the Creator in Today's Multiplatform TV Landscape

TVOT SF 2016 Highlights Video

[itvt] is pleased to present a highlights video of our most recent TV of Tomorrow Show event, TVOT SF 2016, which took place last June in San Francisco. The video contains interviews with a range of sponsors, speakers and attendees.

TVOT - Designing

TVOT NYC 2016 Fireside:

Designing for Viewer Engagement on Social-Media Platforms

TV Before Social Media: What The Dark Ages Looked Like

January 09, 2013

Before Social Media, How Did We Experience Tv Shows With Others?

Do you remember taking two rolls of pennies to school to be like Fonzie's cousin Angie who stacked 40 quarters on his elbow and in one fell swoop caught them all in his hand? He was trying to set a world record and the boys in school were trying to impress the girls.

Back in the day, this was one of the ways people discussed their favorite televisions shows from the night before. "Internet" wasn't even a word in the mid-1970s, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even a gleam in his parent's eyes, and wireless phones, computers, and tablets were relegated to annals of science fiction.

Still, everyone had methods of social media for the purposes of discussing things like favorite television shows. I remember my older sister watching the likes of "Rhoda," "The Waltons," and "Police Woman" with the phone glued to her head, her BFF on the other end, discussing every scene, cute boy, and tearful moment as it unfolded.

I think this was more of a girl thing than a boy thing, because I don't recall my brothers doing that. I do, however, remember them going outside and meeting up with their friends to act out all the best scenes from "Baretta," "S.W.A.T.," "Starsky and Hutch," and re-runs of "Combat" from the night before. This was how we showed our total approval—and sometimes disapproval—of what we'd just seen on television.

I remember howling with laughter with some of my friends after we'd witnessed Sgt. Yamana (Jack Soo) eat some laced brownies on a particularly hilarious and product-of-its-time episode of "Barney Miller." We didn't really understand why he was so intoxicated, but it was clearly one of the funniest moments we'd ever seen on television, and we talked about it for ages.

In the public arena, the water cooler at the office was another important gathering place to discuss television happenings from the night before. Make no mistake about the water cooler back then. It was a real gathering place for such important discussions. Sure, they still exist today, but they don't hold the same purpose or charm they held in the pre-internet days. Today, they just dispense hot and cold water, the hot being an improvement over the old days.

But that's the only improvement. Adults had face-to-face discussions about "Monday Night Football" and how Howard Cosell was obviously drunk as he threw up on Don Meredith's cowboy boots; or when Sacheen Littlefeather refused to accept Marlon Brando's Best Actor Oscar because of the unfair treatment of American Indians by those in Hollywood.

The water cooler was there to witness all the excitement, emotions, and lost productivity when Luke Spencer and Laura Webber tied the knot on "General Hospital," the most-watched episode of a soap opera in the history of cable tv.

As email became a little more popular in the 1990s, more conversations about our favorite television shows came in this digital form. Remember getting spam emails about your favorite shows, sometimes with hundreds of other recipients, and that one person who was new to email would do a "Reply All" talking smack about something or another? This frequently made for as much drama as the shows they were discussing.

Today, the water cooler, rotary telephone, even email and many face-to-face discussions about our favorite television shows have each given way to new forms of social media. Text messaging, show-specific blogs, Facebook and Twitter posts, and even live comments during any number of television shows have all become common place.

If you are one of the majority of people who own a smartphone, laptop, or tablet device, then you might be a "second device" viewer. In fact, 75 percent of Americans who watch television do so with an internet-connected device at their immediate disposal.

As commonplace as eating dinner while watching television, 65 percent of today's connected viewers surf the web while watching television, 60 percent are on email, and nearly half claim to be on social media sites at the same time.

No one can deny the importance social media plays when it comes to television programming. Even old geezers who remember first-run episodes of "Happy Days," "Baretta," and "All in the Family" make the most of this new technology. After all, 27 percent of all second-device users are 44-years-old or older.

Old habits are hard to change. When you really like your television shows you'll find a way to talk about them. Isn't it great there are so many different avenues today?

Tracy Swedlow & Richard Washbourne

Tracy Swedlow and Richard Washbourne own TMRW Corp., the parent corporation which produces InteractiveTV Today (this site) and The TV of Tomorrow Show executive conferences in San Francisco and New York City twice a year. We are headquartered in San Francisco, California. Find Out More